Merry Christmas! (Sorry no Card)

We have been getting lots of Christmas cards in the mail from family and friends all over the US with precious pictures of their family and updates on the past year of their life. I love getting these cards, seeing recent pictures, and reading updates, but I have felt a little guilty this year not sending our own out. We just didn't fit Christmas cards into the Frantz Family Christmas budget (which my wonderful gift giving husband neglects to observe half of the time), but we will try to work it in next year... so all that to say, sorry for those of you who might have expected a Christmas card! But I was thinking today, most of the people, if not all of the people, who we would have sent cards to read our blog, so though this is a little technologically informal - here is this years Frantz Family's Christmas Card and update (though if you keep up with us on here you are updated regularly!)

Photograph by Amber's photography (*to see more email me and I'll send you the link!)

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peache among those with whom he is well pleased!"

Luke 2:11-14

This has been a wonderful Christmas season for us. We are very blessed to go to a Christ centered and exalting church that has helped us focus our hearts and minds on Christ's first coming in becoming man and the expectation of his second coming! We have enjoyed a month of having nothing but Christmas songs, especially those great traditional hymns, played in our house almost constantly. We have had gotten to go to some fun Christmas parties, have friends and family over to enjoy the season, baking those traditional Christmas goodies, and watching good Christmas movies. Thanks to my creative and festive husband, we have also done some special things to celebrate. We made a trip to Bardstown and toured "My Old Kentucky Home" all decorated for Christmas. We kept our tradition of exchanging ornaments on the 9th, which started 2 years ago when he proposed. He even managed to make Christmas shopping overly fun... we took a trip to Target one night and split up for 15 minutes buying stocking stuffers while trying to avoid each other the whole time. We are looking forward to spending Christmas Eve with Michael's family, having our first Christmas morning in our home as a family, spending Christmas day with some close friends from church, and spending the week after Christmas in Mississippi with my family. It's going to be busy but a lot of fun!

A quick overview of the past year for us... it's has been a whirlwind of a year, but what else would you expect? January, February, and March flew by preparing for Baby Madeline to arrive with showers, getting her nursery ready and those oh so fun birthing classes. In April we celebrated our 1 year anniversary! In May we celebrated our birthdays, I graduated from Southern, and the our first precious baby girl was born. The rest of the summer is a blur as we adjusted to being parents. This fall has been busy as Michael has decided to finish school at Columbia Southern University, and should be done this time next year! He continues to work hard at the fire department and painting with a guy from church on his off days. I have loved being able to stay at home and devoting all of my time to being a wife and mom. In October we found out that we would be expecting another Baby Frantz in June! We are continuing to pray about the future that God might have for us overseas and are anxious to go but patiently waiting for God's timing and direction.
Madeline just turned 7 months old! I can't believe how big she is. She gained 2 pounds this past month, so the doctor is no longer concerned about her growth. Her sweet personality is really starting to shine through. She loves people, especially other kids, and she often waves and smiles at complete strangers. She has found that she can squeal and often does this, especially in the car singing to our favorite Christmas music. She loves to laugh and be very silly. She becomes the silliest and most talkative when she is getting tired (like a typical girl!), and can have a whole conversation by herself. She lights up a room by flashing her ear to ear grin. She has also found that she loves to eat and now eats avocado, oatmeal, apples, bananas, pears, peaches, sweet potatoes, peas, and green beans.

Hope you enjoyed our Christmas card! We hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas. We are thankful for each of you in our lives! Here are a couple of pictures from our holiday festivities.

Family ornament exchange December 9th

Mike and Maddie braving the cold in Bardstown

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Well the Christmas season is finally here! We went to Mississippi for a little over a week for Thanksgiving and had a blast. We got to see Matt and Jen on the way home. We got to spend a couple of days in Columbus, saw some family and friends, had the first family pictures made. Mike even killed his first deer! We got to have lunch with our dear friends Andy and Melanie which was such a blessing! Then we headed to Pete and Susan's cabin in Yazoo County for Thanksgiving. The guys did a lot of hunting and the gals did a lot of relaxing! I would show you lots of pictures but the one thing I forgot on our trip was my camera! This is one that Erica took for us while we were there.

When we got back we started decorating for Christmas and finally got our tree up yesterday. Madeline is fascinated by the lights and ornaments. I can't believe that she is 6 months old! She is quickly becoming a little mover. She is trying to crawl, though most of the time it looks like she is trying to swim. She is constantly busy wanting to touch and feel everything. She has started babbling too. First words of course was "da da". It usually comes out "da da da da". At her 6 month check up the doctor was concerned about her weight and a couple of other things so he ran some tests for cystic fibrosis and some metabolic disorders. We found out while we were in Mississippi that the cystic fibrosis test came back negative, and we have not heard back about the other tests. It was a time of us really trusting God's goodness no matter happens. We are very thankful for our church family and everyone else who have prayed for Madeline and given us much support and encouragement. We are very grateful that Madeline is healthy and are having so much fun watching her grow! We hope you all have a wonderful time celebrating this season!

Fun Times

Children are such a blessing from the Lord. Who knew you could have so much fun with a spoon full of applesauce. We wished we had more video of this because it kept getting funnier with each bite. I almost had as much fun listing to Mariah laugh! Enjoy....

SURPRISE!!!!!!

Sorry for not posting in a couple of weeks. There has been a lot going on to catch y'all up on. One of the main reasons I have fallen behind in posting is because I haven't been feeling very well and have been unusually tired. Well come to find out, I am not technically sick. The Frantz family got a great surprise last week.... Madeline is going to be a big sister come June! If the home pregnancy test didn't confirm it completely, I went to the Dr. yesterday and they did an ultrasound. I am almost 7 weeks along and the due date for Baby Frantz is June 28 (exactly 13 months past Madeline's due date). Though we were a bit shocked and overwhelmed at the fact that we will have 2 children about a year a part, we are completely overjoyed and excited. We have always wanted a big family, and its just happening a little quicker than we expected. Here's the first pics of Baby Frantz...

Other happenings since we last posted:

Madeline experienced her first Halloween. The weekend before Halloween we went with the Murrays to the Louisville Zoo. They have a huge Halloween party. The zoo decorates different sections of the zoo as themes from kids movies like Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and of course all the Disney princesses. It was really cute and we had a lot of fun. Wal-Mart ran out of infant costumes, so I had to be creative and use what we had here and Maddie went as Strawberry Shortcake. Here are some pics from the event:

Daddy and Maddie at the zoo

Will and James

Strawberry Shortcake Chelsea the Doctor

Corey and Claire the Renaissance Ladies

Maddie's first pumpkin carving (mike really did it!)

You can see other pics from Halloween and the pumpkin patch on our photo journal.

I can't believe Madeline will be 6 months old in about 10 days. She is so much fun right now as she is getting more and more playful. She wants to touch everything and of course it all goes in her mouth. She can sit up all by herself now, and she loves Bailey! She is growing up so fast. That's about all the updates for us right now! Have a great weekend!

It's Finally Fall!

Well it finally feels like fall in Louisville! To celebrate we did one of our favorite things this past Saturday. We went to Huber's Farm in Indiana and went apple and pumpkin picking. We had a blast along with the Murray's and a couple of other families from our small group.

In the Pumpkin Patch

Apple Picking

We also went out to Bernheim forest last Sunday with the Murray's and enjoyed a picnic under the changing leaves.... Here are some pics from our outing.

Just wanted to show y'all some pics of the latest new change in Maddie's life. Because she is rolling over she had to get rid of the swaddle when she sleeps. So here are her new sleeping positions. Although she cries forever sometimes at night to get to sleep these are the precious positions we find her in!

Roll Baby Roll

For almost a month now Maddie has been almost rolling over. She will get all the way and get her arm stuck under her. This morning Michael was on the phone and all the way over she goes. Of course I was out at the gym and missed it all!

Recent Happenings...

We have been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. As soon as we got back from the Smokies, we went to the annual Hot Air balloon festival at Bowman field here in Louisville. It was really cool and a lot of fun to hang out with some good friends. Madeline slept through most of the balloons glowing at night, but we enjoyed seeing them light up.

The next weekend mom and Erica came into town. We went down to the St. James Art show on Saturday. Sunday and Monday were mainly spent shopping and being entertained by Madeline. It was such a fun time... Maddie loves her Marmie and Aunt E! I just wished we lived closer together.

This has been a big week for Madeline. She has stopped sleeping through the night so a friend suggested I try some rice cereal during dinner. So, this week Madeline was introduced to solid foods for the first time. Go figure she loves it! She opens her mouth extremely wide when she wants another bite and will grab your hand and force it toward her mouth if you don't do it fast enough. Note the second pic. Though it might be messy, she is extremely happy after she is full! She has been sleeping her regular 10 hours again, so mommy and daddy are thankful for that.

Aunt Missy... note the bib! We won't let her forget how much her aunt in Japan loves her:)

P.S. Check for a new photo journal link. I got the idea from Missy and am trying to get it up and running! You can see all of the pics from the past month (and eventually everything) if it works out.

Trip to the Smokies

This past Wednesday we packed our bags and headed to the Smoky Mountains with the Murrays. We got to stay in a beautiful cabin right out side of Gatlinburg and had a really fun time.

Here are all 11 of us right outside the entrance of the National Park.

Michael has really wanted to see a black bear in the Smokies. Well this year he got his wish! We not only saw one bear but five! This is the first cub that we saw on our way up to Cades Cove the first day.

On our last afternoon there we went to this beautiful stream on a trail up the mountains. It was a cool, crisp fall day and the perfect ending to our trip! We are thinking Thanksgiving next year would be the perfect time to go back... anyone want to join us?

More pics from the weekend...

Hurricane Ike Visits Louisville!

Last Sunday Hurricane Ike decided to visit Louisville! Madeline and I were walking home from church and I noticed it was extremely windy. By the time we got home, the wind had picked up a good deal more. As I was fixing lunch, I noticed I kept hearing branches hit the roof and the grill cover was off again after I had just put it back on. "No big deal," I thought, "it's just a little wind." Michael called saying they had been really busy going on calls with trees falling down. By 1:30, the wind was even harder and the power went off, came on after a couple of minutes, and then went off again not to come back on for 4 more days! Come to find out, winds up to 80 mph swept through the city knocking down huge trees and telephone poles leaving almost half a million people without power. There were several big trees to fall around us blocking rodes and bringing down lots of wires. Our house was unaffected besides a few big limbs that were flung from a neighboors tree and planted in our yard. We are really thankful that Michael was safe as he was working that day and saw a good number of trees fall. We are also thankful that we had a gas water heater, stove, and grill. It was fun and romantic for a couple of nights to live by candelight, but that wore off and we were glad to get power back mid week. There are still many without power though.



Other news this week.... Madeline turned 4 months old. Time is flying by. She is still a little jabber mouth and is laughing a lot more. She loves watching her Baby Einstein videos and talking to her toys! She also has started loving to stand up these past couple of weeks and is really close to rolling over. She is so fascinated by most anything and grabs anything within sight! She loves being around people and her smile lights up the room!


Here are lots of pics from the past couple of weeks for a glimpse into our life and to see how Madeline is growing!